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Managing Your Accounts with eSignal’s Portfolio Window
Whether you have one individual trading account or you're a fund manager tracking multiple ledgers, the eSignal Portfolio window can dramatically ease the overhead of keeping tabs on investments. Come with me this month to take a closer look at this very useful, yet sometimes underappreciated, window type.
Tracking Profits in Real Time
When entering a new portfolio for the first time, you'll often want to start by entering the amount of cash available in the account. By doing so, you'll have a real-time summary of the entire account's value on the Total line. And, as you enter each position, the cash position will be updated with the cost of the subsequent entries.
From this point, you'll want to enter any positions needed in the eSignal Portfolio window by typing in a symbol and pressing enter. After that, you will be prompted to enter the details for the trade; just be sure to select Update Cash Position to withdraw the funds from the $CASH entry in order to keep the portfolio totals in check.
After you have entered all your positions, you'll begin to reap the fruits of your labor. The ability to track each position's value in real time enables you to make money management decisions based on the most up-to-date information possible. In addition, you'll also have easy access to your profit / loss totals.
Figure 1: eSignal Portfolio Window
Multiple Accounts
Many eSignal clients have more than one trading or investing account, especially when you consider the many investment options that exist (i.e., Roth's, IRAs, 529 education accounts, and so on). Perhaps, you manage a variety of trading accounts for friends or family or, perhaps, for clients of your own. No matter how you govern your assets, the eSignal Portfolio window can make your financial life easier.
With eSignal, you can open multiple windows of any type. This is especially useful when using portfolio windows because you can create a single window for each account you want to track. To do this, you'll first need to switch eSignal into Layout Mode by clicking Page, Layout, Save Layout, and then choose a name for that layout.
Once eSignal has a layout open, each individual window is treated as a stand-alone file. Two benefits of running in this mode are that you can assign a name to each window and maintain a unique and separate portfolio file for each account you are tracking. This is especially helpful when backing up a PC or just for general organizational purposes.
Figure 2: Tracking Multiple Portfolios in eSignal (click image to view larger screenshot)
Working with Derivatives
So far, we've looked at how the eSignal Portfolio window works with equities. However, one of the nicest features of this window is that tracking derivative products, such as options and futures, is just as easy, thanks to the default multiplier that is applied to the Add Position window.
For example, if you are trading the S&P 500 E-mini futures (currently, ES M7 is the symbol) and you enter a position into a portfolio window, you will see the following screen.
Figure 3: Entering a Derivative
You can see that the correct ratio is applied automatically in the calculations for a position in this contract. If you aren't familiar with futures, this “$ value” number is the amount of leverage applied to the Last of that symbol. In other words, for every 1 point move in the S&P 500 index, the value of the E-mini futures swings 50.00 dollars in that same direction.
In the same way, equity or index options are easily accounted for by using a multiplier of 100. And, again, this is automatically done for you. All you need to enter are the position details, such as the number of contracts, the price you entered at, the commission and so on. And, all the rest of the calculations will be done for you automatically and in real time.
